Politically Foul

What happens when a politician trades the C-SPAN camera for the movie camera? Senator Patrick Leahy is a mild mannered judiciary committee chairman by day, Gotham crime fighter by night. Leahy made a cameo in the Batman movie The Dark Knight back in 2008, telling Heath Ledger's character the Joker: "We're not intimidated by thugs." Right before the Joker sticks a knife to his throat. But the die-hard Batman fan wasn't scared off, and is returning for a cameo in the summer blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises.

Will this Batman movie measure up?

"This one has a bit of danger, but nowhere near what I faced with the Joker," Leahy local Vermont station NECN about his role.

Almost as scary to watch this week:  Snooki and Newt fist bumping on late night television. That's right, former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich shared air time and traded jokes with the Jersey Shore reality TV star. A match made in TV heaven.

Missing the match-up on the big screen this week

Top Line

The Obama campaign is going retro, circa 2004. Back then, President Bush supporters attacked then-Democratic candidate John Kerry on what was supposed to be Kerry's greatest strength -- his military service. A group known as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth undermined that strength, calling into question Kerry's credentials and military awards. And thus was born "swiftboating" -- a term used to describe unfair or untrue political attacks.

The latest wave of Obama attacks is like Bain boating. The president's re-election campaign is armed with surrogates tasked with specific duties, making the case early and often that voters should be questioning Mitt Romney's taxes, off-shore accounts, and his record at Bain Capital. They are probing for different weaknesses, and aggressively attacking Romney at a time when voters should be talking about negative job numbers.

And they've succeeded. Romney has been unable to effectively respond to the attacks. The Obama campaign took

Spinners and Winners

Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum bested ABC News' Jonathan Karl in a bowling showdown, rolling his way to a 125-109 victory. Oh, and he also talked politics.

Asked if he thought choosing former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — who describes herself as "pro-choice" — as Romney's vice presidential pick would be a mistake, Santorum thought it would make a Republican victory less likely, "this is non-negotiable for a vice presidential pick."

Santorum wants presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney to win the White House because President Obama, he says, is abusing his power. Case in point, according to the former Pennsylvania senator, is the recent change to welfare reform giving states more flexibility to waive work requirements.

Welfare reform was "something that we fought for, President Clinton signed in 1996 right before the election. Huge transformation of the welfare rolls, dramatic reductions, increases in employment, reductions in